What an "Anglo" foreign policy actually looks like

The Abbott Government likes to speak of its fondness for the Anglosphere, yet it is out of step with the UK and US when it comes to climate change and foreign development, writes Dennis Altman.

I was recently invited to a reception at the Australian Embassy in Washington to hear the Foreign Minister speak at the opening of a conference titled "US-Australia: The Alliance in Emerging Asia".

There is something grating in the phrase "emerging Asia", rather akin to the idea that Australia was terra nullius until Captains Cook and Phillip arrived. It embodies the mixture of naivety and arrogance which too often flavours Australian foreign policy, and is by no means the preserve only of the current government.

To date the main contribution of the Abbott Government to our relations with Asia has been a marked deterioration in relations with Indonesia, because of its determination that "stopping the boats" overrides all other issues. I feel some sympathy for Foreign Minister Bishop, who clearly has a personal relationship with her Indonesian counterpart which could be far more usefully employed than in supporting the macho posturing of her colleagues.

But then one wonders how much power Bishop actually has. On several occasions before the election she spoke of the need for a specific minister for overseas development, who would take over control of AusAID (Labor only appointed such a minister under the final Rudd government). The draconian cuts to aid, and abolition of AusAID as separate agency, suggests she was overruled.

It is ironic that one of the first acts of the new government was to abolish a dedicated development agency at the point when Australia is arguably more able to play a global role than ever. One of Bishop's first tasks was to preside over the Security Council, where Australia has a two-year term, thanks to a determined campaign by Kevin Rudd - the importance of which she questioned while in opposition. And late this year the Prime Minister will chair a G20 summit in Brisbane, the most significant international meeting ever held in Australia.

Despite this, debate about the directions of the new government has concentrated almost entirely on domestic matters, although the asylum seeker issue has considerable regional implications. Tony Abbott has made several trips to the region and acquitted himself if not with honour then at least without any major faux pas; it is to his advantage that he does not believe he is an expert in international affairs.

Bishop, too, has been travelling assiduously - one admires her capacity for looking collected despite the almost permanent jet lag that accompanies the job. But at a time when Australia has almost by accident become a middle influence player on the international stage, there is remarkably little debate about how we should exercise our role.

As soon as possible the Prime Minister needs to spell out a vision of how Australia will use its various international positions to further national interests in ways that are consistent with global peace and development. One should be wary of grand statements about foreign policy - an Abbott doctrine is a scary prospect - but without some sort of coherent framework, comments such as declaring Japan to be our best friend in Asia suggest a foreign policy that is made up rather like an election campaign, with statements thrown out for their immediate effect.

The irony is that Tony Abbott has consistently proclaimed his desire to be part of the "Anglosphere", but he is out of touch with the leaders of both the UK and US. Unlike his government, that of British prime minister David Cameron - a Tory - has ring-fenced foreign development assistance. And US president Barack Obama has made clear that he considers climate change a vital issue of foreign policy, a consistent theme of his current secretary of state, John Kerry. Both leaders are less enthusiastic partisans of the current Israeli government than the Abbott government, which seems quite uninterested in how our position on the Middle East might impinge on our relations with significant countries in our own region.

There is a long tradition dating back to the Vietnam War of the Australian left arguing for a more independent foreign policy, rather than the conservative position of following our "great and powerful friends". There remain powerful arguments for Australia to develop a foreign policy which recognises we are a small country in a region far removed from the North Atlantic (one of the oddest parts of our military involvement in Afghanistan was that it was under the aegis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).

It is a mark of the shallowness of our national debate and the policies of our current government that perhaps the best advice one could give to Abbott is to listen more to Obama and Cameron, and recognise, as they do, the importance of development and non-military security issues. Abbott might well discover that his fondness for "the Anglosphere" would lead to a foreign policy that recognises the long range dangers of global inequity, and the need to make immediate sacrifices for long term survival.

Dennis Altman is a Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University. View his full profile here.